At least 2,325 people have died from the virus, according to official data, with outbreak on track to be biggest in history

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is now the deadliest in the country’s history with at least 2,325 people dead, according to government data, surpassing the toll from the 2018-20 outbreak.

The DRC’s public health institute said confirmed cases had risen to 4,945, including 101 detected in the previous 24 hours.

Man dies in Bas-Uele after travelling from Haut-Uele, as head of WHO says outbreak on track to be deadliest ever

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a sixth province, officials have said, a day after the head of the World Health Organization said the outbreak was on track to surpass the deadliest in history, which killed at least 11,000 people more than a decade ago.

The current outbreak has killed more than 2,100 people out of more than 4,500 cases, according to the latest government figures released on Tuesday. At the same point in the 2014-16 outbreak in west Africa, the previous most deadly outbreak, 755 cases had been recorded, according to WHO data.

Hakainde Hichilema is bidding for second term, but feud between him and family of Edgar Lungu, who died in 2025, continues

As Zambians go to the polls on Thursday, the ghost of the current president’s predecessor hangs over the elections.

Hakainde Hichilema, 64, is bidding for a second term leading the southern African country after defeating his arch-rival Edgar Lungu by a landslide in 2021.

Operation under way to rescue dozens missing after boat overturned by waves at world’s largest human-made lake

At least 44 people have died after an overcrowded ferry capsized on Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, police said.

The boat had a capacity of 90 people, but was carrying 114 adult passengers, five crew members and an unknown number of children, Zimbabwe’s civil protection unit (CPU) said earlier on Wednesday, citing ticket sales.

Activists in the region say politicians regard LGBTQ+ people as ‘the easiest scapegoats to maintain their power’

A growing number of west African countries are implementing or strengthening anti-LGBTQ+ laws, amid local political pressures and a global pushback against LGBTQ+ rights.

In March, Senegal doubled the maximum prison sentence for gay sex to 10 years and criminalised the “promotion” of homosexuality. Niger criminalised “sexual relations with a person of the same sex” in February, the first time same-sex intimacy had been outlawed in the country.

Thousands have fled amid months of anti-immigration protests as campaigners demand undocumented people leave the country

In Thembelihle, an informal settlement south of Johannesburg where thousands of breeze-block houses and metal shacks line dirt streets flooded with filthy water, Malawians had lived for years alongside South Africans without any problems.

But in the last few weeks, a series of armed robberies has shaken the community. On 29 June, several men broke into the compound of Eibraheem Hussein, a 60-year-old Malawian who has lived in South Africa since 2000. They beat him and stole valuable items.

The men were convicted over alleged plan to stage coup and organise deadly demonstrations over fuel prices last year

Two Russian men have been found guilty by an Angolan court of terrorism and spying after being accused of planning a coup and helping to organise deadly demonstrations in the southern African country last year.

Lev Lakshtanov and Igor Ratchin were sentenced to eight and 11 years in jail respectively. They had denied the charges, claiming they were in Angola for cultural and business activities.

National Geographic explorers create dive lab after finding too few black film-makers telling African wildlife stories

When Pragna Parsotam-Kok and Noel Kok made a wildlife series for South African TV in 2015, they were struck by how challenging it was to access animals to film and how few other African wildlife documentary makers there were.

Their response was to set up the not-for-profit Nature Environment and Wildlife Conservation Trust (NEWF) and to host a conference for African wildlife film-makers, the first taking place in 2017.

French health ministry says patient’s contacts are being traced and that risk to European public is very low

The first case of Ebola has been confirmed in France, the country’s health ministry has said, in a doctor who had returned from a humanitarian mission to an area affected by the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The patient was transferred to a specialist facility and was in a stable condition, the ministry said in a statement. “All precautionary measures, including the patient’s isolation, were taken upon his arrival in the country, with transfer to the hospital under secure conditions to prevent any risk of contamination.”

For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades race

In the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza, first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire.

Runners gather before the start of the marathon

‘Mastermind’ Dawie Groenewald given fine of 2m rand or four-year jail term almost 16 years after arrest

Two traffickers of rhino horns have been sentenced by a South African court in what police said was the world’s largest such case, partly bringing to an end an almost two-decade legal saga.

Dawie Groenewald and Tielman Erasmus had faced more than 1,700 charges ranging from illegally hunting and dehorning rhinos to racketeering and money laundering.

16 June 1976 is not just another chapter in the history books, nor is its aftermath and legacy, say those who took part and their families

The day of 16 June 1976 began peacefully in Soweto. Student leaders at high schools across the sprawling Johannesburg township, to which the apartheid regime had exiled hundreds of thousands of black South Africans, took charge of the morning assemblies. They led their fellow students into the streets and began to march toward Orlando stadium.

The students were protesting against the government’s imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. Their teachers barely spoke the white minority language and the students did not want to learn the oppressor’s language. They were tired of the intentionally substandard Bantu education, tired of being second-class citizens.

African migrants say legal status offers little protection as rallies against illegal immigration gain momentum

African migrants in South Africa say they are living in fear after a series of marches calling for illegal immigrants to leave reignited long-held xenophobic sentiment in the country.

March & March, a campaign group at the forefront of recent protests, has given people living illegally in the country until 30 June to leave, without specifying what will happen to those who do not.

Healthcare should be free but lack of essential supplies has led to patients being told to buy their own medicines

In late 2023, Boitumelo Mosege fell sick. Her neck swelled up, her whole body itched and she fainted frequently. She was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and had to give up her work as a farmer on the outskirts of Molepolole, a town about 30 miles north-west of Botswana’s capital, Gaborone.

In Botswana, public healthcare is supposed to be universal and free. However, Mosege said she had only sporadically received medication since becoming ill. The 53-year-old relies on her four children’s occasional piecework (where a worker is paid a fixed rate per task or unit produced), and her mother’s 1,400 pula (£77) monthly pension, to afford 2,000 pula-worth of medication every month. In early May, she said it was three months since she had last bought medicine.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calls for ceasefire, saying no conflict was worth condemning people to death from preventable disease

The deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo can be stopped, the head of the World Health Organization has said, as he arrived in the country to support efforts to contain the disease.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in Kinsasha on Thursday and was due on Friday to travel to Ituri province in the north-east, where the outbreak was centred.

Parents face anxious wait for updates after blaze tears through Utumishi girls academy in Gilgil, Nakuru county

A fire that ripped through a dormitory at a girls’ school in Kenya overnight has killed at least 15 students, according to police, while dozens more were injured.

Gilgil police station said at least 15 girls died at Utumishi girls academy in Gilgil, Nakuru county, about 76 miles north-west of Nairobi, according to a police report seen by Reuters.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns of ‘catastrophic collision of disease and conflict’, as Uganda closes border with DRC

The head of the World Health Organization has called for an immediate ceasefire in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to help tackle the Ebola outbreak there, as Uganda closed its border with its neighbour in an effort to stop the spread.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on social media that the region was in the midst of a “catastrophic collision of disease and conflict with the Ebola outbreak in Ituri province outpacing the response”. Tedros said on Monday that he would travel to the DRC this week.

Bonolo Selelo and Tsholofelo Kumile are going to court for right to wed but face fierce opposition from church groups

Bonolo Selelo was at Botswana’s national museum for a Gaborone Pride event when she spotted Tsholofelo Kumile and was struck by her good looks. The two initiated a conversation and when Kumile expressed anxiety about what a tarot reading at the event might hold, Selelo thought nothing of offering her a hug. The reading turned out positive but Kumile claimed her hug anyway and they talked for hours.

That was 1 October 2023. Two months later, they moved in together. Then, on a hike during the Easter holidays in 2024, Selelo proposed to Kumile. A year later, they visited a local government office to register their intent to marry and were told it wasn’t legal.

Country with a population of just 2.5m credits investment in young athletes for its rise but this progress is under threat

It was a fairytale ending to the World Athletics Relays in Gaborone. In the final strait, Collen Kebinatshipi surged past South Africa’s Zakithi Nene to win the men’s 4x400m relay for Botswana. The home crowd, a sea of light blue, went wild.

“It means so many things to us,” Letsile Tebogo, 22, the reigning 200m Olympic champion, who ran the second leg, told reporters afterwards. “Not just the team … but for the people that always cheer for us behind the TV. Now they had that experience to see first-hand how much effort, how much pressure, how much we give for them.”

Africa is leading a change in news consumption habits – and transforming the lives of current affairs enthusiasts

Last year Amahle-Imvelo Jaxa posted a TikTok video about South African peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She explained an argument that had erupted between the South African and Rwandan presidents, then listed roles different South African groups would play in a war with Rwanda: the Sotho strategists, the Xhosa negotiators, the Afrikaner muscle. The video went viral and she racked up 100,000 followers in three days.

This breakout video enabled Jaxa to pivot from being a marketing and restaurant entrepreneur to a “professional yapper and current affairs enthusiast”, part of a group of content creators explaining the news to young South Africans who, like many of their global peers, are eschewing traditional news in favour of social media.